In traditional simultaneous multislice (“SMS”) magnetic resonance imaging (“MRI”), the signals from the multiple excited slices are untangled by using the different coil sensitivities of a multi-channel RF coil. The scan time acceleration achieved depends on the number of coil channels available, among other factors. Increasing the number of coil channels leads to challenging design and construction problems. Thus, scan time accelerations of about 2-4 fold are typical with specialized hardware (e.g., 32 channel coils), but the resulting data is qualitative rather than quantitative. Additionally, acceleration in the slice direction comes at the cost of reduced in-plane acceleration. If a short echo time (“TE”) acquisition is desired, the maximum acceleration factor is greatly reduced.
Therefore, there remains a need for a method that permits in-plane acceleration without adversely affecting slice acceleration and without requiring specialized coils.